


Hope in the Dark

by TrackerKitsune



Series: FFXIV Write 2019 [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Gen, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Tales from the Shadows spoilers, let G'raha mourn god damn it, whole lot of dead characters referred to here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-16 23:49:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20611409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrackerKitsune/pseuds/TrackerKitsune
Summary: Hope cannot be allowed to be snuffed out, but sometimes G'raha Tia found it hard to bear.





	Hope in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> FFXIV Write Challenge 2019 Prompt #11: Snuff
> 
> (Snuff - to snuff out, to kill)

A small model of Omega was the most immeasurably precious thing in the possession of those who woke him, two hundred years into his sleep. It was a relic made by hopeful hands that had seen the whole world at the side of a willful yellow chocobo that had been born a construct itself. G'raha Tia had recognised the Ironworks' unique work immediately, taking it with shaking hands and poking at it carefully until it revealed its records. And wept, railing against the cruelty of the Eighth Umbral Calamity. The successors to the Ironworks watched in surprise as he stormed out, forming an aetherial weapon without thought and letting his grief out on a nearby tattered, nearly rotten through training dummy. He could have retreated to the tower to unleash his anger, had done so before, but he had come to trust them enough to show these bouts of emotional turmoil around them.

He sliced into the lump of wood with abandon, thinking over what Omega had told him. Budding relationships and lives, snuffed out by a cowardly and impersonal chemical weapon. Communities torn apart, destroyed by the corrupted aether within their everyday necessities - food and water becoming toxic. Wedge dead from a beast's claws without ever being able to tell Tataru how deeply, obviously in love with her he was, and Biggs heartbroken for the rest of his days. Cid and Nero, throwing their last years and hopes into a plan that rested on his shoulders.

The Scions, killed to the last by the bombs that had been dropped in the middle of Mor Dhona - one of the dummy's arms went flying but still he hacked into it, a frustrated, anguished cry erupting from him. The Warrior of Light, not slain in battle or dead of old age amongst family and friends, but stolen from the world by a gas that stopped their heart dead. He dearly hoped it had at least been in their sleep, that none of the Scions had known what was hitting them and that they had at least had some measure of peace. Dropping to his knees, the miqo'te let out a hopeless yowl for lost friends and colleagues and dispelled the sword. His nails sank into the dummy’s chest as he wailed. What a dark and bleak future this world after the Eighth Calamity was.


End file.
